Zero Dark Thirty star ‘stunned’ by Oscar snub

The Oscar-celebrated Zero Dark Thirty, which opened in Canada Jan. 11, continues to be a convenient target for scolding American politicians.

But a controversy of a different kind revealed itself when Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow was ignored in the director category of the Oscar nominations announced Jan. 10

The movie, which chronicles the hunt for 9/11 terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, did pick up a best picture nomination. Jessica Chastain earned a best actress nod for her portrayal of the determined CIA analyst in the movie, and Mark Boal picked up an adapted screenplay salute.

Still, Bigelow’s omission came as a shock to many in the movie industry, including Australian actor Jason Clarke, who plays a U.S. government interrogator in Zero Dark Thirty

“I am depressed and stunned to be honest,” said Clarke from Los Angeles. “At the end of the day, we didn’t do this to get accolades, but Kathryn walked an amazing tightrope with this film and presented an extraordinary story that everybody knew the ending to.”

Certainly, the film received mostly positive reviews since its limited U.S. release in December, plus Vancouver film critics’ and New York film critics’ best picture awards.

“Kathryn led us through a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I will never forget her for it,” said Clarke. “She allowed me to walk through an amazing door, and was with me all the way.”

In the picture, Chastain plays Maya, an agency analyst who is relentless in the pursuit of the wanted-dead-or-alive al-Qaida leader.

She joins forces with Clarke’s operative Dan to piece together bin Laden’s whereabouts. Their characters’ single-minded mission is underscored by sequences of water-boarding detainees to get vital information.

Co-starring in the suspense procedural are Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt. They play the U.S. navy SEALs in the assassination unit. Kyle Chandler portrays the Pakistan CIA agency station leader. James Gandolfini is the CIA chief.

Bigelow’s movie tends to be straightforward, but the response to the harrowing drama has been a polarized mix of praise and condemnation.

Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain and U.S. Senate intelligence committee chairperson, Dianne Feinstein, have already said that Bigelow and Boal seemed to be endorsing torture by depicting it. Feinstein’s committee is also investigating whether the director and writer had illegal access to classified information.

Neither Bigelow nor Boal (who collaborated on the Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker) will discuss the screenplay’s details. But Bigelow responded to the torture accusations recently at a New York Film Critics Circle awards night. She said, “I thankfully want to say that I’m standing in a room of people who understand that depiction is not endorsement … ”

Chastain, who was previously Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in The Help, said that she didn’t speak with the analyst on whom her portrayal is loosely based; that person is still in deep undercover.

Instead, she read Michael Scheuer’s book (Scheuer was head of the CIA group hunting bin Laden), Osama bin Laden, as well as other texts during three months of pre-production preparation for her part. In fact, the actress was just as obsessive as her character. She dropped out of a lucrative part in the upcoming Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Oblivion so she could accept the Zero Dark Thirty assignment.

Chastain and Clarke said they mostly relied on Boal’s specific screenplay, written as only a former investigative reporter would write it.

“In terms of research,” Chastain said, “there was a great deal of information in the script. I called him Mark the Professor.”

Clarke, who will be featured in Baz Luhrmann’s May release of The Great Gatsby, agreed.

“And we were always very aware of how important the work was so we approached each scene as though we wanted to make sure we were doing it justice,” he said.

It helped, too, that Zero Dark Thirty is Chastain and Clarke’s third film together after previous collaborations in Texas Killing Fields and Lawless.

“It absolutely made things easier for us,” said Clarke. “It meant we could get right into what we were doing.”

Immersing themselves in the interrogating moments was emotionally difficult yet unnervingly effortless, since the scenes were filmed at a primitive Jordanian prison.

“It was tough, to be honest,” Chastain said of the gloomy environment. “We weren’t on a sound stage in Los Angeles.”

“We were grateful for the surroundings in a way,” said Clarke. “We could feel it while were acting it and we knew we’d see it on the screen.”

The torture controversy is an issue Clarke has had to address since he started doing promotional interviews. And, no, he didn’t meet any CIA interrogators but he did refer to research he had done playing a cop on the series The Chicago Code.

It’s not a surprise that he agrees with Bigelow about the necessity to include those sequences in the movie.

“You have an obligation to show certain events,” Clarke said. “And it’s really not my job to judge my character.”

I am the Postmedia News movie writer and canada.com columnist. I prepare features and profiles stars of major motion pictures, including Robert Downey Jr., George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts... read more. Previously, I was a movie writer for Postmedia's National Post. I was at the George Lucas farm near San Francisco to report on the last Star Wars picture, Revenge of the Sith. I was in New York for the first preview of Peter Jackson's King Kong remake. And I have been up close and personal with high profile A-listers such as Cameron Diaz, Matt Damon, Jennifer Aniston and many others. Before that, I was a sleep-deprived pop music writer and critic, a film writer and reviewer, and entertainment editor at the Toronto Sun. I also worked at CBC as a writer and producer, and was one of five writers selected to produce the script for the CBC's Canada For Asia live tsunami benefit broadcast in 2005.View author's profile